Fifty-four percent of American parents now rate the overall conditions for raising a family in this country as “just fair” or “poor” — and their kids, when asked the same question separately, land in almost the same place at 56%.
The numbers come from Common Sense Media’s 2026 “The State of Kids and Families in America” study, which surveyed parents alongside kids and teens ages 12 to 18 and found rare agreement across the generational gap: both groups think the country is failing to set families up to succeed, and both groups pointed to overlapping reasons why.
Money is the headline, but it’s not the only worry
Half of parents surveyed said their ability to afford the products and services their kids need has gotten worse, not better. That financial pessimism reaches further than the grocery bill: Common Sense Media’s press release puts the number of parents worried about their children’s future economic opportunities at nearly 80%, and two-thirds of parents don’t think their kids will be able to afford a home, a college education, or raising a family of their own when the time comes. Kids themselves are somewhat more optimistic about those same milestones — majorities of the surveyed teens still expect to manage it — which is its own kind of finding: the grown-ups have less hope for the next generation’s finances than the next generation has for itself.
Federal spending on the youngest kids is shrinking, not growing
One of the sharper findings sits in the policy data rather than the opinion polling: less than 2% of total federal spending in 2025 went toward children under age 3, a share that’s fallen roughly 20% since 2021. That’s the age range where pediatric and early-childhood research consistently shows the highest returns on investment — and it’s the range getting a smaller slice of the federal budget than it was five years ago, even as parents report the cost of raising kids that age climbing.
Parents have opinions about what would actually move the needle. Fifty-eight percent said better public schools would substantially improve life for kids, 55% pointed to improved access to mental healthcare, and 53% backed free preschool. None of those are exotic asks — they’re the same three items that show up in family-policy debates every election cycle — but the survey suggests the demand for them is broad rather than partisan-coded.
What the survey actually measured
Common Sense Media is best known for research on kids’ media and technology habits, which makes its jump into a broader “state of the family” survey notable on its own. Pairing responses from parents with responses from kids and teens ages 12 to 18 — rather than only asking adults to speak for their children’s experience — is part of why the findings carry more weight than a typical single-audience poll. When two groups surveyed separately, without seeing each other’s answers, land within a couple of points of each other on a question as broad as “how are American families doing,” that convergence is itself a data point.
Nobody feels heard, least of all the kids
Just over half of parents said they feel shut out of decisions government makes that affect families. Kids feel it more acutely: nearly seven in ten surveyed teens said their voice doesn’t factor into decisions made by local or federal government. Nine in ten parents and kids alike said they want lawmakers to make youth-focused policy more of a priority, a rare point of near-unanimous agreement in a survey otherwise full of generational splits.
Mental health, and where parents place the blame
Forty-three percent of parents rated youth mental health in their own communities as fair or poor; 54% of kids and teens agreed, with a notable gender gap — 60% of girls versus 48% of boys took the more negative view, and only 38% of girls described overall conditions for kids as “excellent” or “good,” compared to roughly half of boys. Nearly a third of parents pointed to social media and screen time as the primary driver of the youth mental health crisis, and 82% said reducing smartphone and social media use would benefit students — a striking level of consensus for a topic that usually splits parents down the middle.
None of this reads as a single crisis with a single fix. It reads like a lot of small, compounding gaps — in money, in mental health support, in political attention — that parents and kids are both watching widen from opposite ends of the same household.